In my conversations with the Telegraph owner, he was eccentric and gossipy, but above all a true believer in Brexit
For all that Daily Telegraph editors professed to be their own men, the newspaper seldom, if ever, took a view on a major issue of the day – most notably Brexit – that didn’t happen to coincide with that of Sir David Barclay. “I owned the toy shop and got to play in it,” Barclay, who died on Sunday at the age of 86, once gleefully admitted to me.
Slight, dapper and with a curious resemblance to the elderly Stan Laurel, Barclay, the co-owner of the Telegraph with his twin brother, Sir Frederick, kept a studiously low public profile, but was in private forthright and clearly used to getting his own way.
